Welcome to Barely Legal: The Blog; This blog is run by two recent law school grads, Russ and Mike. Back when we were still law students, this was the most popular law student run blog in the world. Now, who knows what we are or what this blog is. Nevertheless, everything on this blog is uncontroverted fact, and should be interpreted as such.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Ambition Run Amok

I have a friend; let’s call her “Courtney”. Courtney, like many of you, is a law student. Also like many of you, she hates law school with a passion. Courtney works for a fancy law firm this summer, which she hates. And Courtney has no desire to practice law.

I figured that Courtney got into her predicament the usual way: she was utterly clueless before entering law school, and by the time she realized her true feelings, she was stuck. Assuming this was her story, I made a remark about it to her, which she quickly corrected.

“Oh, no, I knew it would be like this,” she told me curtly. “When I was in college I had friends who were in law school, and they told me all about how much they hated it.” I was about to interject, when she continued. “Then after I graduated, I worked as a paralegal at a giant law firm for a year. It was miserable; the people were terrible, some were really evil. I was a naïve 22 year old when I started. I know this sounds weird, but working at the firm, I lost my youthful innocence.” I was about to make a virgin joke, but she kept going. “All my friends who were in law school when I was in college had graduated and moved on to big firm jobs of their own, and they hated it too. Plus, I started researching law school on my own, and discovered that most people I talked to, perfect strangers who were recent grads or current students all told me not to do it. I knew exactly what it was going to be like, and that I would hate it.

When she paused to take a sip of water, I got a word in. “Wait…so if all these people gave you such a bad impression of it, and you knew you’d hate it, may I ask why you even bothered to begin with?”

I assumed that this profound question would give her pause, and make her ponder her decision. I was wrong. “It was my goal,” she said earnestly as she took a bite of taco salad.

There's a real over-importance placed on ambition. Sometimes it's not always the best quality. Wouldn't the world have been better off with a lazy Hitler? He would've turned in and taken a nap halfway through Poland. He’d awake later and forget all about Europe, and decide to learn how to play the guitar.